Cádiz

‘How wonderful yellow is. It stands for the sun’

Blogging challenges, England, India, Spain

At the moment, we all need the glow, the zing that a good splash of yellow can provide. Luckily, Jude has provided the perfect opportunity for us to hunt down all our yellow-rich images, in her challenge Life in Colour. Let’s have an injection of gutsy, vibrant lemon, amber and gold alongside our long awaited Covid vaccines.

I’d thought of showing those springtime flowers we all love – aconites, daffodils, primrose, tulips and kingcups. But maybe I’ll save those for another day. Here’s a complete hotch-potch of yellows to cheer up a day which, here at least is thoroughly and dismally grey.

  • The sign that greets me whenever I leave the house
  • A shop and its reflections in Granada
  • My first friend in Bangalore: the rickshaw driver who took me on a tour of the city
  • William, obligingly wearing yellow, at Newby Hall.
  • Advance guard at Le Tour de Yorkshire
  • A puppet at the Museo del Titere, Cádiz
  • A pinted door in Valencia.
  • A back street in Seville.
  • Garage door in Seville.
  • Another Seville door
  • Valencia
  • A Seville building in need of a make-over gets one …

To view any image full size. just click on it. The quotation of the post title is by Vincent Van Gogh. No wonder he liked sunflowers. And the header photo shows one word from another quotation. Wander round the St. Paul’s area of London and you’ll eventually uncover the whole sentence, from Virginia Woolf’s novel, Jacob’s Room: ‘What are you going to meet if you turn this corner?‘ What indeed? In this area of London, enough to fill an entire guide book.

More postcards – and from Cádiz again

Spain

I have said it before, and I expect I shall say it again, but our few days in Cádiz earlier this year – this year! – are part of another life – a life I want to remember and treasure. And Jude provides an opportunity in her Travel Challenge. She’s hoping that outline, rather than three dimensional qualities will come to the fore in our choices of photo. As I looked through my archive, I realised that Cádiz fits the bill, yet again.

It’s nearly all about the seafront. Those palm trees! Those street lights!

Or we could look beyond the old city to industry and modern life in the distance.

Or we could go indoors – first to climb the Cathedral tower and to inspect the old clock workings: before going to a traditional sherry bar, Manzanilla, to enjoy a quiet drink and a snack surrounded by those barrels of maturing sherry ¡Salud!

2020 Photo Challenge #49

A window in a bad way

Spain

Tomorrow, for our regular Tuesday Day Out, we’re taking (another) trip to Cádiz. We’re going to spend time near the sea and pop to a couple of places in town. But today I want to take you instead to Plaza de España. Here is a handsome house in a handsome area. But now it’s down on its uppers. No longer smart, it’s still extremely characterful. I thought it deserved its fifteen minutes of fame.

Monday Window

Noticing the notices: a Saturday smile.

England, India, Scotland, Spain

Trawling through my photos looking for something I couldn’t find, I came across these.

  • No driver in India needs to be asked twice to use their horn. At any time of the day or night.
  • I didn’t stay here ….
  • … or take this advice
  • Wensleydale Railway. We shut the gate.
  • Sadly, we saw no red squirrels in Dumfries and Galloway
  • Cádiz
  • So we didn’t.
  • I can’t remember where we spotted this pub. Just as well.
  • ‘Going to the hairdresser is the best natural anti-depressant’: Cádiz.
    Especially after Lockdown …

The featured photo comes from RSPB Saltholme.

Cee’s Friday Funny Finds

Six Word Saturday

A Sunset Symphony

Blogging challenges, Spain

Was it really in January this year that we were in Cádiz? It feels like another era, but one I can summon up in my head by remembering the glory of the sunsets we saw there. You’ll have seen at least some of these photos before, but this is your Virtual Holiday for the week. I’m presenting them to Jude for her Photo Challenge this week, and to Becky – well, one of them anyway – for her October Squares. How kind of me to share!

2020 Photo Challenge #41

#Kinda Square

Everything Points to the Cathedral

Blogging challenges, Spain

I’ve shown this image before, but it’s a textbook  demonstration of perspective – everything here leads your eye to the cathedral in Cádiz – so let’s give it another outing – squared up of course – for Day Ten of Square Perspectives.

Were we really only there in January?  It feels like another life, a different world.  And look at that clear, warm light!  Ah well …

Keep Right on to the Top of the Road

Blogging challenges, London, North Yorkshire

‘Look for converging lines’, instructs Jude.  They’re there to add depth and distance, so she wants to see what we can find as illustrations.  So I went to Cádiz, I went to Brussels, I went to Yorkshire – of course.  And finally I went to London.

Here we are on the road by the seafront in Cádiz. The road, our eyes are lead inexorably towards the Cathedral.

Now we’re in Brussels. I quite like it that the street’s more easily seen in the plate glass reflection. And that the lines on the window, and on the pavement are also working towards converging.

Since the Tour de France started in Yorkshire in 2014, dear old Buttertubs has been elevated to being called Côte de Buttertubs. You can cycle it yourself … or not. Look at this picture and decide.

Nothing can top your very first ever walk in the snow. This was William’s first chance, back when he was three.

2020 Photo Challenge #16

#Squaretops 22

Vertically Challenged

Uncategorized

It’s time for Jude’s 2020 Photo Challenge again, and this week, she’s asking us to focus on the vertical.  It’s not surprising that I’m heading for cityscapes on the whole: though not entirely.  I wanted to have something for #15 Squaretops too – so look out for a topsy-turvy image at the bottom of the post.

Here are two riverside skyscrapers: quite similar.  But I like the way that in one – in Seville, on the Guadalquivir – the upward sweeping lines are emphasised by its reflection rippling on the waters beneath: and in the other – in London, on the Thames – it’s the contrast with the blocky cranes that does the job.

Then I chose a couple from Cádiz.  Palm trees.  In one the tall palms lead your eyes to the – rather small – moon, and in the other, two wayward palms making an impromptu arch contrast with the properly upright trees they’re next to.

Back in London, Greenwich actually, the standing figures echo the massed skyscrapers of modern 21st century London.

And I liked this shot from Warsaw. The vertical lines aren’t all that pronounced, but still lead you up to those precariously perched window cleaners.

Finally, an image (square of course) taken on the Leeds-Liverpool Canal near Gargrave.  Have you noticed it’s upside down? Topsy turvy? That’s the water up above, and the trees and sky down below.